U.S. says UN arms proposal tramples 2nd Amendment

July 10, 2001|By Barbara Crossette, New York Times News Service.

UNITED NATIONS — The Bush administration, which has already pulled away from a range of international treaties, warned Monday that it would not join a pact to curtail the global flow of illegal small arms if it infringes on the American right to own guns.

Speaking to the opening session of a conference on the trafficking of weapons that fuel civil wars around the world and expanding networks of organized crime, John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, invoked the 2nd Amendment.

"The United States believes that the responsible use of firearms is a legitimate aspect of national life," he said. "Like many countries, the United States has a cultural tradition of hunting and sport shooting."

Americans, he said, do not find all guns "problematic."

The bluntness of his remarks surprised some delegates to the two-week conference. But the U.S. reluctance to expand gun controls internationally is shared by other countries, among them China, India and Russia, diplomats said.

UN officials insist that the conference is not about taking guns away from Americans but about keeping hundreds of millions of weapons out of the hands of child soldiers and pick-up armies, often in the poorest countries.

But the meeting has set off a reaction in the United States among those opposed to gun control. The United Nations has received scores of angry letters and has collected some strongly worded press releases and posters from groups concerned about the issue.

Last week, UN undersecretary general for disarmament, Jayantha Dhanapala, announced publication of a booklet called "Setting the Record Straight," which was intended to allay American fears.

But a widening gap between Europe and the United States over how broad an agreement is needed to combat the spread of weapons has heightened American sensitivity.

Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who is on the House Judiciary Committee and the board of directors of the National Rifle Association, rejected UN efforts to calm the gun lobby. He isan official observer at the conference.

"You look at this," Barr said, holding up a working paper at a news conference, "and there are a number of areas that very explicitly set forth that could very well be used to directly involve the United Nations in domestic firearms policy."

The United Nations estimates more than 500 million small arms exist throughout the world. It says that 40 percent to 60 percent of them have been acquired on the black market, where commodities such as diamonds are bartered to make purchases of the weapons.

There is no legally accepted definition of small arms or light weapons, though the United Nations tried in 1997 to describe them as "any weapon that can be fired, maintained and transported by one person."

Such arms include pistols, assault rifles, some machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars and some missiles. They are the hallmarks of contemporary warfare, which often involves guerrilla forces and often affects civilians the hardest.

While some regions of the world have put in place treaties or agreements to control the flow of small arms, the UN conference is the first attempt to find a global agreement.

Bolton defended the record of the United States in controlling its exports and asked that other nations be equally vigilant, and he listed several areas of disagreement with the UN proposals.